


Markers

by Amymel86



Series: The Outside [8]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Distopian AU, F/M, Jon Snow Knows Nothing, Modern AU, Post-Apocalypse, brainwashed soldier!Jon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27453157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amymel86/pseuds/Amymel86
Summary: How on earthdocivilian men even do anything without constantly wanting to be touched by their women? He exhales a shaky breath. He wants to...he wants to... he doesn’t really know what he wants to do but he wants to do it so damnmuch. It’s like his whole body has been lying dormant until she came along and now – now, he isalive.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Series: The Outside [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1929445
Comments: 34
Kudos: 171





	Markers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vivilove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivilove/gifts).



> A small continuation of The Outside series. You will need to have read the previous parts to know wtf is going on! lol
> 
> Gifted to Vivi who made me this gorgeous pic set to bribe me to continue! And would you look at that? It worked! lmao!

They’d stayed away from the road and kept an ear to the radio Hill202 had given them. Jon twiddles with the dial, checking all channels as he follows Sansa, traipsing their way through the woods. She was keeping an eye on all trees that they pass, apparently sensing that they were close enough to her camp that there should be markers.

From what Sansa has told him, the piece of land The Resistance calls home is deep in the belly of the forest and tricky to find. He wants to ask more questions; about her brother, about The Resistance... about her boy-friend, but she seems very preoccupied with finding these markers so Jon keeps quiet.

“Ah-ha!” she says triumphantly. Jon comes to her side to see what she’s found. “Here’s one, look!”

There, on the trunk of the tree, there were two lines scored into the silvery bark. Jon looks to Sansa, finding her already beaming that smile back at him. “What does it mean?” he asks.

“North, south, east, west,” she tells him, counting the words on her fingers. “There’s two lines on the tree so it’s indicating the second.”

“So we should go south?” he says, fishing for the compass in his pack.

“No,” Sansa says with a smile. She reaches forward, pressing her palms on the bark and staring up to the branches above. Jon was confused. “This here is a deciduous tree. We do the opposite.” She looks back to him then and Jon is still none the wiser. “We go north.” She took his compass, fingers slipping against his own, stunning him for a few moments before he realises she is moving again and he needs to follow. “Keep your eyes open for markers. If they’re on an evergreen we follow the direction, if they’re on a deciduous, we do the opposite.”

Jon stumbles a little, trying to keep up. “I don’t know the difference.” Survival training taught him which wood would burn best and which trees gave better cover, but he’s not heard these words before.

Sansa stops, spins and reaches for him. Her hand lacing with his. “Come on, I can show you,” she says, sounding excited.

Jon’s pulse is thick between his ears as she tugs him along with a burning palm and erratic heartbeat.

***

Jon had found the last marker. It had been on what he can now recognise as an evergreen, it’s long reaching branches heavy with deep green needles.

“You’ve _never_ met a woman before me?” Sansa’s voice sounded disbelieving and this had been one of the few times that her eyes had strayed from either their path or the compass to find him. She wasn’t holding his hand anymore. Jon could still feel her fingers between his, weaved together perfectly.

“No. Not close up anyway.”

She laughs, but the sound comes from her nose. Despite the chilly bite to the air, their clambering through the undergrowth, carrying heavy supply packs seems to have made Sansa warm. She has removed Jon’s Crow jacket and has it tied around her waist. The clothing item she wears beneath is a black under-vest with the skinniest straps that Jon has ever seen. One of them keeps slipping from her shoulder – she has those pretty little dots there too – and Jon can’t help but think it would take no effort at all for him to rip at that ridiculous string-like strap and snap it in one go.

He shakes his head of the thought. _She wouldn’t like me thinkin’ that._

“That explains a lot actually,” Sansa says, following the compass in her hands.

“Explains what?”

“The way you look at me sometimes. At first I thought-“

Jon quickens his pace to be beside her instead of following. “You thought what?” he asks, interested.

“It doesn’t matter.” She bends to pick up a long stick again, using it to walk with even though Jon knows she does not need the aid. “Why did you help me escape? Why didn’t you... follow orders to do what they wanted you to do to me?”

Jon watches the fallen needles at their feet, brown, not green, the top layer seeming dry and brittle, but there’s a slight spongy feeling from beneath. “You would not want me to do that. I didn’t seem right to do that to person when they don’t want it.”

She’s quiet for a pace or two. They both manoeuvre a fallen tree. “What would’ve happened if you’d just refused. Would they have killed you?”

“Before, definitely,” Jon says, scratching his beard as they walk, watching Sansa hold the compass aloft to keep them on track. She pauses to check the trees for further markers. Jon turns around too, figuring he should probably help with that. “But once they found out what I can do? No. No, they would’ve forced me somehow.” Once he’s spun completely around, he finds Sansa stood, staring at him now.

“What can you do?” she asks.

“I can... they told me you can do it too – leave here,” he says, tapping his temple, “and see out of an animal’s eyes. Control it’s body.”

Her hand holding the compass lowered. “You’re a warg?”

Jon had never heard that word before. He’s never heard a lot of words before. He’s just a stupid Crow. Saying nothing, Jon watches Sansa blink those blue sky eyes at him. She steps closer – really close, studying him, mapping out the features of his face.

“It’s very very rare,” she whispers, staring right into his eyes before her own dart around his face only to return. “I’ve only ever met-... my family are the only ones I know of-“ Her eyes narrow and her brows knit. “How old are you, Jon? Do you know where you were taken from?”

Jon swallows. She’s so close. The scent of the forest around them now mixes with that nice smell of Sansa. “I don’t know,” he says, voice hoarse. Pushing up his sleeve, he shows her his identifying tattoo. Snow264. “I only know I was taken from the North.”

The feeling of Sansa’s fingertips as she gingerly traces the ink of the ‘Snow’ on his arm is like nothing he’s ever experienced. How on earth do civilian men even _do_ anything without constantly wanting to be touched by their women? He exhales a shaky breath. He wants to...he wants to... he doesn’t really know what he wants to do but he wants to do it so damn _much_. It’s like his whole body has been lying dormant until she came along and now – now, he is _alive_.

Sansa wets her lips with a little pink tongue and Jon can feel himself hardening in his fatigues. “ _Sansa_ ,” he says, the words dry and brittle like the needles at their feet.

“Maybe it was fate that they took me that day.” She was still tracing his identifying tattoo – up and down, up and down her fingertip went across the skin of his inner forearm. Jon doesn’t know what ‘fate’ means but he’s afraid to ask. He’s afraid to move in case she stops touching him. “Maybe I was meant to make that mistake with Dickon.”

Jon blinks. “Dickon?”

Her finger stops and she steps away. Jon curses himself for it.

“My... friend.”

_The boy-friend._

Sansa’s started walking again, holding the compass aloft and always on the lookout for more markers. Jon is a little slow to follow. “He’d just come back from a raid and said he’d found a woman holed up at one of the nearby outposts – pregnant. She needed my help.” She pauses, turns this way and that as she stares at the compass and rights their course. “I told him we needed to wait until more people could come with us – for safety. It was protocol. But he said he’d protect me.”

“Didn’t he?” Jon asks, keeping pace with her now. There wasn’t anything Jon wouldn’t do to protect Sansa.

“We pulled up at the outpost and he told me to wait in the truck so he could go in and do a check before he came and got me... only someone else was waiting to come and get me instead.”

“The Watch.”

Sansa nods, finding another marker on the trunk of a tree. They started heading east.

“How did they know I was a warg?”

Jon shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“I thought me being taken that day was just bad luck but maybe-“

She didn’t finish. Her steps had sped up. “But maybe _what?_ ”

“Look!” Sansa exclaims, ignoring his question. “We’re here! I knew we were close!”

Hidden between tree trunks in the thick of the forest, Jon could just about make out a crudely made fence. Sansa starts sprinting toward it as best she can with the pack on her back, leaping over fallen trees and twisted roots. Jon follows, his heart in his mouth.


End file.
